The Boy Who Never Drowned (#JustWriteIt) #Wattys2015

Preface

I was twelve. I didn't know quite what to think of her. She was laced over the bed, her eyes fixated on the window and her undiscovered world she saw behind it. The glass was clouded with December cold but she saw a clear view of a freedom that she could not grasp. Her luminous skin glowed in the premature light, a skin littered with purple and blue patterns that throbbed with pain. The quiet storm in her grey eyes was in a forever turmoil, for she lived in the eye of a whirlpool, unable to escape. I did not know of her struggle then, she was just a woman that I was told was my mother. Her midnight screams, the scratches that appeared of the servants faces; a secret prisoner that I was supposed to call mother. She was deathly still, silent. I held my breath, absorbed in her voiceless screams. My mother, surrounded by maids who looked as lost as she did. I felt a strong hand on my shoulder, and the stern, shaking voice of my father telling me to go on a walk.

The vast window of the laundromat on the other side of the street that stretched to the horizon, displayed an image I would remember for some time. A girl in long white socks and an oversized jumper was kneeling down collecting her laundry, her spiralling waves of orange hair toppling over half of her face and her shoulders. She had red lips and big dark eyes, looking out from a face of freckled cheeks. In that moment I thought I was trapped in the pages of a love story that had no time. It appeared that she was innocently gazing upon her basket of clothes for my whole life up until the age I was then. I watched her still elegance and wondered if all women in London could be this beautiful at eight o'clock in the morning while washing their clothes.

#JustWriteIt #Wattys2015

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